Garrett sipped her coffee and made a face. Despite the white and sweetener, her coffee tasted sour and burned. Old. Sighing, Garrett worried a stray bit of coffee grounds between her teeth. Shefelt old. Weighed down. She knew why. She’d been blindsided. Again.
First Nigel. Garrett picked the ground off her tongue and flicked it from her fingers. And now Halak. Garrett stared into her mug as if divining tea leaves. No answers there, not about Halak, or Nigel. She ran her thumb over the surface of her mug. The mug was black ceramic with tiny yellow and white stars: a gift from Jase for her birthday three years ago. She felt the narrow ridges of raised glaze etched around each star. She liked to hold the mug, cupping it in both hands, the way she used to cup Jase’s tiny face when he’d been a baby.
Hard to hang on to the people you care about. Like hanging onto dreams when you first wake up. The dreams are so vivid you think you can’t possibly forget. But you open your eyes and they evaporate, like mist from a pond under a hot sun, and the people you love are just gone.
Nigel. Those damn smugglers. Klingons, to boot. Garrett hadn’t even known there wereKlingon smugglers; she would’ve thought smuggling a dishonorable profession, but there were, apparently, just as many bad apples amongst Klingons as there were among humans. Her only solace was the knowledge that the Klingon High Council dealt with their own as harshly as they did outsiders. No exile to Rura Penthe for the smugglers. They’d drawn death instead, and Garrett hoped their executions had been very painful and very bloody, for a very long time.
Good old-fashioned revenge. Garrett swirled her coffee. Not an emotion fit for a starship captain, but she didn’t care. Twice in her life now, she’d wanted revenge and gotten it. Nigel’s death was one of those times. (The other had happened a long time ago, on Earth, when she was eighteen and her sister Sarah was nine, but she didn’t like to think about it.)
Stern told her to give it up, this guilt she had about Nigel. The problem was no matter how many times she went over the scenario, she came to the same conclusion: Nigel should be alive. He wasn’t, and that was because she hadn’t trusted her own instincts. No, that wasn’t right. Garrett’s eyebrows met in a V.She’d gone by the damn book. If she hadn’t, Nigel would be alive.
First rule: A ship in distress took priority over all other considerations. Everything else came second. Hell, everything else was third.
Reminding herself that Nigel had volunteered didn’t ease the pain. So when the Klingons opened fire on the very transport ship they’d been trying to pirate, she had a choice. Rescue the transport crew, or rescue Nigel.
First rule. First duty: A ship in distress had priority.So the transport crew was alive because Garrett had gone by the book, and Nigel wasn’t—for the same reason.
The atonal buzz at her door made her jump. Garrett checked the time: 0315. Who…? “Come.”
The door shushed, and Tyvan stepped through. Garrett’s surprise swiftly gave way to concern. She and the psychiatrist hadn’t spoken since Halak’s inquiry, though Stern said she’d given her colleague a tongue-lashing: “He didn’t know anything about my autopsy findings, and you shook him up pretty good, and I said buster, you want to be in the loop, come to staff meetings and stop acting like you’re on one side of a portal and we’re on another, and when the captain says jump, you say how high,ma’am, that’s what I said.”“Doctor? Is there something wrong?”
Tyvan crossed to stand before her desk. He carried a padd. “No, Captain. I just thought you might want my fitness report on Bat-Levi.”
“Fitness report? On Bat-Levi? At thishour?”
“Well, you’re up, I’m up,” Tyvan said, proffering the padd. “Actually, I think you’ll find that her performance has been exemplary, even with all the stress.”
Replacing her mug on her desk, Garrett took the padd and quickly thumbed opened Tyvan’s report. “I’ve had no complaints.”
“You took a risk, asking for her.”
“Before her accident, her record was good. She had a career in front of her. Very bright woman. I wanted to give her an opportunity. As for her physical limitations, well…” Garrett shrugged. “People make interesting choices.”
“Yes, they do. All the time.”
“But.” Garrett tossed the padd onto her desk. The padd clattered and ticked against glass. She gathered up her mug, sipped bad coffee, swallowed. “You didn’t come to discuss the obvious, though between you and me, I wish she’d get those servos fixed.”
“Have you told her?”
“I hinted.”
“Maybe a direct approach.”
“Like an order?”
“I had a strong suggestion in mind.” Tyvan’s lips moved in a faint smile. “I’ve found that people tend to respond better to suggestions.”
Sounds like you got a boot in the rear from Jo, you ask me.“Okay, I’ll strongly suggest it. So, now that’s settled,” Garrett said, as she pushed away from her desk and crossed to the small round glass table with silvered chrome legs that squatted by her observation window. Dropping into a scallop-backed, cushioned armchair covered in mauve fabric, she waved Tyvan to a chair opposite. “There’s something else on your mind, Doctor. That wasn’t a question, by the way.”
“But not quite an order.”
Garrett’s lips curled into a half-moon. “Take it as a strong suggestion.”
Tyvan sank into cushions, settling his long frame, and Garrett noticed that even though he was a very thin man and his eyes were a soft cinnamon-brown and very mild, there was nothing insubstantial or weak about the El-Aurian. Bet he’s made of strong stuff, and he’d have to be to survive what happened to theEnterprise- B and come right back aboard her successor.
Tyvan lifted his chin, sniffed. “What isthat you’re drinking? It smells burned.”
“Day-old coffee. Want some?”
“No, thanks, I’m not that masochistic. At least it smells better than Klingon coffee.”
“Never developed a taste for that stuff.” Garrett didn’t bother adding that she had no reason to love Klingons, or anything Klingonese. “What’s on your mind?”
“Well, to be frank, Captain…May I speak freely?”
“Go.”
“Well…you.”
Garrett’s eyebrows headed for her hairline. “Me?”
“And the crew. It’s all in there,” Tyvan hooked a thumb at the padd lying on Garrett’s desk. “Second report after the one on Bat-Levi. Unofficial, of course.”
Garrett unfolded from her slouch and, reaching forward, put her mug on the table. The ceramic clicked against glass. “What’s up?”
“Actually, it’s what’s downthat worries me: morale.” Tyvan leaned forward and let his clasped hands hang over the points of his knees. “Morale isn’t good right now. I believe the term you used with Dr. Stern was…in the toilet.”
“I may have said something like that.”
“I disagree with your assessment. I don’t think what the crew’s feeling right now has anything to do with depression. True, Batra’s funeral was very hard, for some more than others.”
Garrett wondered about Castillo but held her tongue. It wasn’t her place to ask Tyvan if the young ensign had seen him, and Tyvan probably wouldn’t say unless he had concerns about Castillo’s job performance.
Tyvan said, “But the crew’s horrified about Halak, and not necessarily because they think he’s done anything. With a few exceptions, they simply don’t believe Starfleet Intelligence. They… weknow that our mission to the Draavids is just to get us out of the way. We know you can’t refuse, but that doesn’t stop us from being angry.”
It was on the tip of Garrett’s tongue to protest that, no, every assignment was important, but she didn’t. The crew—Tyvan—was right.
“Plus, the crew’s beginning to second-guess themselves, rehash things from the past, wonder whether or not they made the right decisions, whether their commanding officers know what they’re doing.” Tyvan gave a sheepish grin. “Me, too.”